


You Fell Right Into My Arms And Fit Into My Puzzle

by halloa_what_is_this



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Older Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:26:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21766804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halloa_what_is_this/pseuds/halloa_what_is_this
Summary: When he is eight years old, Sherlock decides he will marry John Watson.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 17
Kudos: 164





	You Fell Right Into My Arms And Fit Into My Puzzle

**Author's Note:**

> Russian translation by [Little_Unicorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Little_Unicorn/pseuds/Little_Unicorn) available [here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/8959709) and [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22196608).

One of Sherlock's earliest memories is of John Watson in dungarees, tottering across the playground towards him, eyes set in determination. 

He is four years, nine months and six days old, though everyone thinks he is older because of his books, his height, and the way he dresses. 

The child stumbling towards him looks like he could be about fourteen months. 

He sits down opposite him on the grass in the shadow of the giant oak tree and stares. Sherlock shifts uncomfortably, trying to get back to his book, glances up again, sees the child suck determinedly on his dummy before popping it out of his mouth and offering it to him. 

The dummy is blue and green and has a picture of a ladybird on it. It is wet with saliva, gleaming in the summer sun like the most valuable jewel. Even the child’s hand is wet to the wrist. He must suck on it when he doesn’t have his dummy handy. Sherlock can see his first milk tooth peeking out. Clearly his parents are trying to wean him off. 

He stares at the saliva-dripping object on the small palm, looks back at the solemn face, and shakes his head. He buries his face back into the book, preparing himself for the crying that is bound to come. But the child stays silent and he lifts his head up, intrigued. 

The dummy is back in place in the child’s mouth and the child itself it tottering back towards his mother sitting on a bench with another young woman. Bright yellow pieces of felt on the back of the dungarees spell JOHN. 

The next day, Sherlock returns to the playground, allows his mother to fuss over him, comb his hair and tuck a clean napkin into his pocket before dashing to his spot in the shade. 

But somebody is already there. 

John, dressed in green shorts today, is on his knees in front of the oak, clearly determined to catch something crawling on the roots pushing up from the ground. Sherlock tries not to care about the intrusion, sits down and opens his book. He barely has time to get through three paragraphs when he feels John sit down, offering his closed fist to him, which is clean and dry this time. Sherlock looks up. Even the dummy is gone. John is as solemn as the day before, pushing his fist towards him, clearly asking him to take whatever is in it. Defeated, Sherlock gives him his hand and something black and blue and incredibly small falls on his palm. 

It is a beetle, a perfectly ordinary beetle. Well, you would think it was, if you knew nothing about beetles. 

But Sherlock does. He knows _everything_ there is to know about them. Mycroft lent him his entomology books when he did not need them anymore, and Sherlock has read them from cover to cover. He has one of them with him now and on the cover there is a beautiful black beetle, very much like the one crawling over his hand. 

He admires the steel-like shell, the fast-moving legs, the overall beauty of the rarity he is holding. He smiles up at John, whose mouth also spreads into a wide grin. 

Sherlock can see the single milk tooth peeking behind slightly open lips.

When Sherlock is not reading John out loud from his book, he teaches him to walk. 

John’s steps are still unsure, wide and shaky, made almost comical by his large baby bottom. Sherlock holds his hands and moves carefully backwards while John tries to walk forwards, staring intently at his feet. It reminds Sherlock of Mycroft and the dance lessons he took with a girl not much older than him. Mycroft had stared at his feet too, scared to death that he would step on the girl’s toes and make her hate him.

She had danced with Sherlock too, lifted him up to her arms and swung him around the room, her laughter streaming out of her mouth like soap bubbles. Sherlock was quite certain he had loved her. He brought her a flower once from one of his mother’s cherished flower beds. When she found out why she was one flower short, she could not be mad at him. She only thought it cute that her little Sherlock had a crush. 

If Sherlock had known what a crush was, he would have corrected his mother and told her in his pedantic manner: “No crush, mama. Yes love.” 

But he did not know what love was back then. He only knew that the girl had cheeks red like cherries and a laugh like soap bubbles and that when she danced with him, he never wanted to let go. 

A year later he is not yet sure what love is, but he guesses it must have something to do with why he feels he never wants to let go of John Watson’s small hands either, why he feels he _should_ not let go of them. The reason is obvious, of course. Letting go would result in John falling down, probably hurting himself, starting to cry and never wanting to be with Sherlock again. 

But there is something else as well.

So he holds on for dear life until John lifts his head, finally trusting his feet enough to look somewhere else than at his Power Rangers sneakers, and that something just happens to be Sherlock’s eyes. A camera clicks and Sherlock blinks. He and John’s mothers are standing not far away from them, both holding cameras, giggling and cooing into their palms, both clearly very happy about something. 

Sherlock feels John tug at his hand. 

John’s face is as solemn as ever, his dummy long forgotten at the bottom of the backpack his mother carries around for him, his eyes lavender blue. 

Sherlock lets go of his right hand, his own still securely locked with John’s left. Together they take John’s last step with support, then Sherlock reluctantly lets go of John’s fingers and sure and confident of himself John begins to walk towards his mother. The camera flashes again. 

Thirty years later, Sherlock still has that photo framed on top of the mantelpiece in his flat on Baker Street. He has looked at it thousands of times, and every time he feels something tugging at his heartstrings, something unknown and unnerving, but at the same time something so wonderful he hopes he could go back to that moment, to see John walk on his own for the first time. 

* 

When he is eight years old, Sherlock decides he will marry John Watson. 

By then, John has long since outgrown his dungarees with his name on the back. He is more into everything edible nowadays and Sherlock likes to sneak little snacks for him when their mothers’ are not looking. John’s favourites are the dried fruit Sherlock’s mother buys from a small shop on Mortimer Street and uses to make healthy snacks for her sons. 

Today it is apricots and John seems to love them. 

He is gobbling them up faster than Sherlock can put his hand into the bag to get them out. 

He watches John eat the dried fruit, talking all the while about the most recent episode of Doctor Who, another thing he seems to love and which Sherlock has never seen. 

Sherlock still doesn’t know what love is, but he hopes that if it is anything like what John feels towards dried apricots and Doctor Who, he would very much like it if one day John was to bestow some of it on Sherlock as well. 

* 

The Christmas before he turns nine, Sherlock finally learns what love is. 

He has known for a while that there are different kinds of love. There is the kind that he feels towards his mother and father, there is the kind that he feels towards Mycroft which verges on adoration, there is the kind he feels towards his distant aunt who only comes to visit once a year and gives him a box of very old chocolates that have clearly been licked by her poodle. 

But the kind his parents feel towards one another, the adult kind, the kind that means you are ready to do anything for the other person, is still a mystery to him. 

Until Mycroft comes home from school for the holidays, his face pale and his eyes red, and hides himself into his room. 

He only lets Sherlock enter and squeezes him tight against his chest before sniffing and telling Sherlock something he says will be the most important advice he will ever get. 

“Never fall in love, Sherlock,” he says. “You will only get hurt and spend the rest of your life pining for something you could never have.” 

Later that day, Sherlock learns from his mother that Mycroft is suffering from something called a broken heart. It means that he was in love with a girl who was not in love with him, which made Mycroft very sad. Sherlock asks his mother if he could take Mycroft to a heart doctor. Maybe they could fix his heart like the dentist does when your teeth have cavities. Or take it out, if it’s too broken. He knows dentists can also take teeth out. His grandmama had all of hers taken out and now has false teeth she pops out and back in to entertain him.

His mother holds him tight and says, her voice oddly thick, that hearts do not work like that. It is not that simple to patch them up, and taking them out completely means that you would die. 

Sherlock decides he will never get a broken heart, not if it is that awful. He cannot understand that falling in love could cause something like it, not if it can make you feel as happy as his love towards John makes him. 

If it is love. 

* 

“John,” Sherlock says on the day before his eleventh birthday. 

They are lying on their backs in the snow on a small hill near John’s home. From there they can see over all the little houses built extremely closely together in the small London suburb, count how many of them have a red slate roof or a black one, how many have had their antenna broken in the recent winter storm. But right now they have their eyes directed towards the iron-clad sky that promises more snow quite soon. 

“Hmm?” John asks. His hands are resting over his chest. They are covered by thick woollen mittens his mum gave him for Christmas. 

“What are you getting me for my birthday?” 

John chuckles. 

“I’m not supposed to say.” 

“But you already have a present for me?” 

John hesitates. He is not sure if this is allowed in the great code of secrecy of birthday presents. 

“Yes,” he answers eventually. 

“If I asked you to, could you give me something else?” 

“But I’ve already got you a present. You’re gonna like it, I know you will!” 

He sounds so enthusiastic Sherlock is afraid to continue. 

“Then can I ask you for something else in addition to this present?” 

John turns his head to look at him. 

“I’m not sure if you can do that.” 

So it’s still about the dos and do nots of gift-giving. 

“Just this once?” Sherlock begs. 

John clearly gives in, because he turns his head back to the sky. 

“If one day I ask you to marry me, promise to say yes?” 

“You mean like pretend?” 

Of course he thinks it’s like what Harry makes them do. 

“No. Like… What our mums and dads have.” 

John ponders on it for a moment. 

“Everyone has to get married,” Sherlock hurries to say. A giant lie, he knows, but maybe it’s a way to dodge the kind of love that comes with a broken heart. Both of their parents seem happy together, so maybe getting married has helped. 

“You promise not to blow up my X-Men comics?” John asks. 

“Of course,” Sherlock swears solemnly. 

“Okay, then.” 

* 

Quite a lot happens on November 8th, the year Sherlock is sixteen. First Mycroft stumbles down the stairs on his way to the kitchen, crashing an antique vase on the windowsill. Next he spills his morning coffee on the front of his shirt and bangs his toe against the table leg when he jumps up. Then both Sherlock and his father almost crack their heads open on the slippery driveway on their way to the car. Sherlock’s mother follows carefully behind them, ranting about bad luck and omens and how she is sure the whole day is cursed and next someone will most certainly die. Sherlock of all people does not believe in luck or omens of any kind, but even he might just agree with his mother when he returns home only to hear that John has broken his leg on the football field. 

Mycroft drives him to the hospital, his face calm and his voice steady, it’s only a broken leg after all. But Sherlock can see his knuckles are white from squeezing the wheel and he cannot help but think that maybe Mycroft knows more than he does. The car has barely stopped before he is already out, running through the halls and demanding anyone and everyone to tell him right now which room John is in. 

A young nurse finally points him towards the right room, and he dashes in, scaring the other patients asleep in their beds. John’s is the last one, just by the window, and as Sherlock pulls away the curtain he is sure he will see John half dead, blood seeping out or bruises mottling his whole body, his breathing heavy and restricted. 

What he sees is a completely whole John, who is stretching his arm towards a pen on the table next to him, his leg hoisted up on a sling which is restricting his movements. 

He sees Sherlock and beams. 

“Excellent! Will you hand me that? I want you to sign my cast.” 

They are allowed fifteen minutes. Sherlock spends it drawing on the cast while Mycroft chats with John about the accident. 

Sherlock visits him every day, tells him about his day and his experiments at home. They read comic books and play cards, and when the visiting hours are over he leaves with a wave and a wink. In the dead of night, he climbs down from his window and sneaks back into John’s room. The nurse finds them in the morning, Sherlock curled up next to John on the bed, his left arm thrown over his chest, the other on the pillow above his head. John is on his back, the only way he can lie down with the cast, his hands lodged against his rib cage. The nurse leaves quietly and goes to phone Sherlock’s parents who have just woken up to find their son’s bed empty with a note attached to the pillow. 

Everyone tells Sherlock calmly that rules are rules and that he cannot sneak in when he likes. After the fifth time the nurse finds Sherlock in John’s bed, they decide bending the rules a little never hurt anyone and arrange a bed next to John’s for Sherlock to sleep in. 

Every morning the nurse comes in and Sherlock and John are both asleep in John’s bed with Sherlock on his side, squeezing John against himself, nearly falling off the narrow bed. 

* 

Sherlock is nineteen and ready to burst out of his skin. John is almost sixteen, so close to adulthood that Sherlock can taste it. He has long since outgrown the idiotic idea that marriage somehow protects love. He knows marriage doesn’t even require love, but it doesn’t mean he has stopped wanting to marry John. 

But right now, he has much more carnal love confessions in mind. 

“I just want to take you to bed all the time,” he tells John, rubbing his face against his neck. “I can’t think about anything else.” 

John chuckles good-humouredly, but it is a little out of breath, a tiny bit strained. 

It makes Sherlock happy, to know that John is just as affected by him as he is by John. 

* 

Sherlock is twenty-one and diving into the pool at the university gym. He is twenty-one and almost done with his thesis, a graduate chemist, as his mother fondly calls him. He is twenty-one and he has had sex with John for the first time on winter break and he still feels it at the soles of his feet. He dives deep into the pool and feels achingly happy. 

He surfaces with a splash and wipes the water from his face. 

“That was a good one.” 

A pair of silvery eyes look down at him, the mouth below spread into a grin that makes something tingle at the back of Sherlock’s neck. It is a smile both unnerving and exhilarating, and Sherlock can’t wait to find out more about it. 

That’s how he meets Victor Trevor. 

* 

“You bastard!” John screams and throws a glass at Sherlock’s head. It shatters and tiny crystals fly around the room. Sherlock barely has energy to duck, the only thing saving him the base instinct to protect his skull from foreign objects. 

“You promised you’d stop!” 

Another glass flies, this time towards his chest. 

John’s aim is getting weaker. He looks close to tears, shaking with spent energy and rage. Sherlock can’t bring himself to care, even though somewhere at the back of his head he really wants to, he wants so much to get up from the floor and take hold of John’s hand, stop him from breaking any more of his property and tell him he is sorry. 

Again. 

For the sixth time. At least. 

So maybe an apology is not enough this time. Maybe this time he will need to do something much more meaningful. 

If he could only pick himself up from the floor. 

Victor really knew how to make someone’s birthday. 

The front door bangs open and closed and Sherlock hears John’s running footsteps retreating towards the road. 

He thinks he may have said that last bit out loud. 

He is twenty-seven years old and sitting on the floor of his flat, a used needle lying innocently among the shattered glassware. 

* 

On his twenty-ninth birthday, Sherlock ends up in the emergency room for bleeding slowly and steadily dry from his hands, having smashed a window to pieces an hour earlier and jumped through it trying to escape the flames enveloping the abandoned warehouse into heat, smoke, and death death death. 

John, on his rotation that night, is cleaning his hands, his own gentle and soothing, wrapping bandages expertly around Sherlock’s torn flesh. He has been practicing for years, studying in the same brightly lit halls where Sherlock sat and listened to lectures on organic chemistry. 

“I didn’t know you worked here, I swear.” 

He really didn’t. Of course he knew John would by now be interning in one of the many hospitals in London, but for once his fantasy of John in his white lab coat had been just that, a fantasy, not something that could be made real by cashing in a long-standing favour a woman in the university registry owed him and to actually find out where John Watson had directed his interest. 

He should have guessed he would find John from the A&E. John’s instinctual need to nurture and take care of those who most needed it has been clearly visible in him ever since he was three and started bringing Sherlock injured insects to cure. 

John says nothing. 

“I’m clean.” 

DI Lestrade, who had sensed the tension between them the moment he had brought Sherlock in, had wisely stepped out moments earlier. He knew, of course. No sensible police officer would even consider attaching a civilian to his cases if they didn't know everything about their history. Sherlock’s colourful one had been forgiven mainly based on his own prowess as a calculating machine, partly thanks to Mycroft whose ability to appear where he wasn't needed had finally proven useful when he had walked in and given his personal guarantee that Sherlock would not now or ever again fall victim to any illegal substances. 

“372 days.” 

He has reached his one-year mark a mere week earlier, and hopes dearly that John will do the math and figure out how long Sherlock had actually sat on the floor of his flat after he had stormed out before seeking professional and filial help. 

John doesn't look up, merely turns his attention to Sherlock’s other hand, his touch suddenly even more gentle and caring than before. 

“Remember what you promised when you were eight?” 

_He remembers_ , he thinks when John finally lifts his gaze from the bloody pulp of hands. His eyes are full of fire. 

“We made a lot of promises when I was eight. And even more after that,” he adds grudgingly.

“You promised to marry me.”

There is no ring on John’s finger. The shoes in the corner look brand new, but they are just well-kept, used with care. So John does not go out or buy new clothes often. His clothes scream the same, his old jacket on the hook of the door. 

Everything about him speaks of lack of sex, romance, any social contact, but not because he looks unattractive. Quite the contrary. 

John is the image of physical health, raw masculine sexuality in his young body that he clearly knows how to use, but does not want to. 

And people are pulled to him. Sherlock saw how the nurse who brought him in had looked at John. His eyes had had that same look of unmasked attraction Sherlock had once caught on his own face when he had glanced at a mirror while John had been crouching down tying his shoes, the muscles on his back and bottom stretching enticingly. 

John lets go of his hands and turns towards his desk, no doubt to write a prescription for painkillers. Something someone with Sherlock’s history can take safely. 

“If you ever go back, I will kill you myself.” 

* 

Of course John doesn’t come back to him right away, of course he doesn't. 

John doesn’t trust him, Sherlock can see that clearly. So he gives him time, keeps his distance, only calling when he has something he knows John will find funny or interesting. 

He never texts. He wants to hear John's voice. 

He keeps his distance and hopes every second that the next text he gets is from John or that when his phone rings it's John calling. 

He never does, and Sherlock knows he has to accept that. He has to keep his distance. So he abstains to one call a week, Fridays, six o'clock precisely. 

But then John gets shot. 

* 

It’s not an interesting situation, they’re not even at a crime scene or in the middle of a case. They’ve just happened to come home at the same time, John carrying heavy grocery bags, clearly annoyed with the heat of the summer that makes his shirt stick to his skin and the weight of the bags which make his arms ache. 

It’s almost been a year since they met again, Sherlock is about to turn thirty (which in his head equals as the beginning of a new era, a fresh decade with no drugs), and John has moved in with him to a flat on Baker Street. It’s still Sherlock’s flat, mostly, but little by little he has helped John realise the futility of using his paycheck to live so far away from his job, from the buzzing of London. From Sherlock. 

He is still walking on egg shells around John, minding everything he says and does, never even toeing the fine line of balance they have achieved. 

It’s still too early.

And yet... 

John already has about half of his wardrobe stored in one of the closets in the room upstairs and he has a toothbrush and his own shampoos in the bathroom. But what Sherlock considers to be his greatest victory is that John has brought all his medical text books with him and even changed the address on his only subscription magazine. 

And he barely buys any food for his old flat anymore, but brings in the shopping to Baker Street every day after work. 

It gives Sherlock hope. 

He is just accepting one of the bags from John to help carry it upstairs when he sees movement from the corner of his eye, hears the sound of the safety being pulled back. John hears it too, and his first instinct is to jump in front of Sherlock, to push him out of the way. He doesn’t have time though, so when the gun goes off and the bullet tears itself through John’s flesh, he falls against Sherlock. 

The street is suddenly full of screaming, running footsteps, luckily noises of struggle as someone pulls the gun from the attacker, kicks him to the ground, and someone is there, with John and Sherlock, trying to help, trying to see where they are hit. 

Sherlock hasn’t seen John’s parents in over two years, and they both look at him like he is not quite there, like they don’t know where he belongs in this hideous play. They sit opposite him and Mycroft on the uncomfortable plastic chairs and wait for news. Sherlock watches John’s father stare stoically down at the floor, jump up every once in a while to pace the hall, only to sit down with a heavy sigh after a couple of laps. It’s horrible to see him like this, because Mr Watson is never silent, never fidgeting. He is always bubbling with energy, with laughter and jokes, and to see him like this makes bile rise up in Sherlock’s throat. 

Mrs Watson fidgets with a tissue the whole time they sit and wait, never looking up. But when the doctor comes to tell them the surgery was successful and that John has been moved to recovery, she sits down next to Sherlock and lays her hand on his. 

Sherlock cries. 

* 

John comes home in time for Sherlock’s birthday. He walks in when Sherlock is standing on top of a ladder, hanging up balloons on the specific orders of their landlady, Mrs Hudson. He almost comes tumbling down when he sees John standing in the doorway, his left arm in a sling. 

“You didn’t tell me...” 

“Wanted to surprise you,” John says. “Thought it would be a nice birthday present.” 

Sherlock grasps his hand, the one that is not hanging from a sling. 

“It was. It was.” 

Then he remembers himself and snatches his hand away. To his surprise, John reaches for it and entwines his fingers with his. 

“Remember when I was thirteen? When I broke my leg?” 

He does. He remembers every second of those weeks, has sought comfort in them in the long months he had no idea where John was or if he would ever see him again. 

“You visited me every day. You _slept_ in my _bed_.” 

John looks up at him, eyes shiny. Sherlock wonders if nostalgia is infectious, because he also feels tears tickle at the corners of his eyes. 

“That’s how I knew you cared. You came to see me, even though it must have made you mad with boredom, doing nothing all day for weeks on end.” 

“I’m never bored when I’m with you,” Sherlock breathes. 

John laughs, then sniffs. 

“Bollocks. I’ve seen you. Covering your yawns when we’re watching Bond. Or itching to look at your phone when we’re having a pint with my friends.” 

John squeezes Sherlock’s hand. 

“But you tolerate it. For me. You never do anything you don’t want to and you make sure everyone knows. But you do those things for me, you defy boredom and visit me in a hospital every day, even though your brain must be gnawing its way through your skull.” 

“I’d do anything for you.” 

John smiles sweetly. 

“Now that I believe,” he says, and it feels like all the oxygen has suddenly escaped the room. Sherlock can feel John’s thumb stroking his wrist, and he wants to look down and check it’s not a hallucination or a loose hair or a piece of lint. But he doesn’t dare to look away from John, doesn’t dare to move in case he bollockses everything up again and John disappears. 

He wants to kiss John so much he feels it in his teeth, but he doesn’t dare. 

So John does. 

Sherlock is twenty-nine years, twenty-three hours, fifty-six minutes and six seconds old, and after two years of waiting, he is finally kissing John Watson again. 

It’s fantastic, it’s brilliant, it’s glorious. It’s heat and moisture and starlight and a volcano erupting all at once, and he whimpers when John stops kissing him and starts talking instead. 

“Sherlock.” 

“Hmm,” Sherlock says, desperately chasing after John’s lips, terrified of what he might say next. Best to just keep on kissing. 

But John lays a hand gently on his shoulder and stops him. Well, tries to, since he can’t do anything with his other hand, so Sherlock’s right side keeps pushing against his left, trying out for a more lopsided kiss. 

“Remember what you promised when you were eleven?” 

That stops him. Ice and heat flush through him at the same time, he has turned to stone, he is a marble statue. And now John’s hand is in his hair. 

_Too good to be true._

John is humming the second verse of _William,_ _It Was Really Nothing._

Behind them in the kitchen, the minute hand on the clock ticks its final minute, and suddenly Sherlock is thirty years old, a new decade of his life has begun, and he is engaged to the boy he has known for twenty-five years will teach him what love means.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a fixation. I love naming my fics after songs that remind me of Sherlock and John. I can't stop myself.


End file.
